After I concluded my series on Song composition tips For Songwriters, I was inspired by my wife to write on songwriting tips for musicians. Now some of you might ask, “isn’t song composition a part of songwriting?” Yes, it is, but it is not all. Songwriting also involves writing the lyrics of the song. So today, I’ll be sharing some other songwriting tips for musicians different from the song composition tips that I have already shared. I’ll like to pause a little here, to say thanks to my lovely wife for inspiring this article. As a matter of fact, she gave me this first tip. Now, let’s dive into it;

Find your inspiration

We’ve all heard musicians we admire introduce a song, especially in a live performance, by saying something like, “this song was inspired by…” Truth is that many great songs we have today were inspired. And for musicians who perform songs they wrote themselves, the difference between inspired songs and others is usually very obvious.

So how do musicians get inspiration?

Are we supposed to just sit endlessly waiting for inspiration to come? Well, different things inspire different people. Personal experiences (whether painful or pleasant) could be a major source of inspiration for a song for someone. A lot of great songs were inspired by personal experiences. Someone else can be inspired from a story they read or heard; whether from a novel or movie, it doesn’t matter, just that the story inspired them.

Another source of inspiration to write a great song is recent happenings around the person. Say for instance, there’s crisis or inflation in their country, it could inspire them to write a song about it. It could even just be something that happened as they were walking or driving on the road, like a fight or an accident or an act of kindness displayed by a random stranger.

Christian musicians could be inspired by an insight from the Bible or a sermon. Another person could be inspired by just watching nature (maybe sitting beside a stream, or on the top of a mountain). I was once inspired by the title of a sermon. Just the title! On another occasion, it was the initials of the artists I wanted to feature in the song that inspired me. There are so many things to draw inspiration from. It just depends on what works for you as a person.

So, as a musician, you need to discover for yourself what works for you and draw inspiration from such. If it is being around nature that inspires you, then try to be in natural environments often.

I had originally wanted to give two tips today, but this article has already reached it’s full length, so I will stop here. Hopefully, I will continue on this series of Songwriting Tips For Musicians in the 21^st Century in my next article. But until then, find your inspiration and write amazing songs.